By Wayne Pacelle

In December 2004, a kitten named Little Nicky was presented to his owner, a Dallas woman who shelled out $50,000 for the honor of being the first person to own a commercially cloned pet. Some eight month later, researchers in South Korea created Snuppy, a cloned Afghan hound. Media reports at the time indicated that the scientists used 1,095 eggs from 122 dogs before they produced Snuppy, whose surrogate "mother" was a golden retriever. 

Snuppy's birth was hailed by the California-based Genetic Savings & Clone, the playfully named company that takes tissue from deceased pets and, for immodest sums, creates clones for bereaved owners. GS&C was the company responsible for bringing Little Nicky into the world.

These two episodes tell us plenty. They tell us that cloning has moved into a highly charged emotional territory, that space occupied by dogs and cats, our culture's most beloved companion animals. They also tell us that animal cloning has moved from closed-door laboratories to commercial application. And while the intention of a pet owner interested in cloning a beloved animal may be decent, the practice itself is rife with hazards, and requires a decisive response from policy makers.

There are many practical problems with pet cloning, not the least of which is that the genetic duplicate may turn out to act, and even look, different from his forebear. Each animal—shaped in part by life experience—is more than an embodiment of his or her DNA. A cloned animal may look much the same, and bring back happy memories for pet lovers, but the clone is not the same animal.   

More to the point, with millions of healthy and adoptable cats and dogs being killed each year for lack of suitable homes, it's hugely frivolous to be cloning departed pets. The challenge is not to find new, absurdly expensive ways to create animals, but to curb the growth of pet populations and to foster an ethic in society that prompts people to adopt and care for creatures in need of loving homes.

Coming Soon to Your Grocery Store: Cloned Meat

Pet cloning is an idea not worth repeating. And beyond the plans to clone puppies and kittens are far grander schemes to clone animals for use in agriculture and research. Before such projects become the norm, we should all pause and think carefully about where it is all leading—for animals and for humanity.

It was big news some years ago when scientists in Scotland announced the cloning of Dolly the sheep. This new technology marked a decisive moment in our ability to manipulate the natural world to suit our designs.

Dolly has long since passed, afflicted by a lung disease that typically occurs in much older sheep. Since her dramatic birth, and her pitiful death at age six, scientists have turned out clones for mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, cows, and now cats and dogs. Behind every heralded success are hundreds of monstrous failures. 

As all of this has unfolded, policy makers have stood idly by, failing to place any restraints on corporations and scientists who are tinkering with the most fundamental elements of biology. We hear indignation and expressions of well-founded concern about human cloning, but we hear hardly a word of doubt or moral concern about the idea of animal cloning, much less about the particular animals subjected to these experiments. 

Biotech companies and their allies in agribusiness are still awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell commercially the products from cloned animals, whether milk from cloned cows or meat from the offspring of cloned cattle and pigs. The Washington Post reported in early October 2005 that the Bush administration was reviewing the FDA's formal policy on cloned products in the marketplace, and was expected to rule favorably soon. If so, ham, steak, and even drumsticks from the offspring of cloned animals could be sitting in grocery store freezers in the near future.

As with pet cloning, the cloning of farm animals is monumentally unnecessary. Farmers are already producing so much meat that they must find export markets to turn a profit. As for milk, it's cheaper than bottled water. The dairy industry recently "culled" tens of thousands of healthy dairy cows in order to depress production.

Small farmers, already put at a disadvantage by mounting debt and mechanized competition, will be further marginalized as cloning practices become commonplace. More than ever, they'll be at the mercy of corporate factory farms to purchase their supply of clones. Consumers potentially face threats of a different sort. Who can say authoritatively that consuming meat and milk from clones is safe? Studies have addressed this issue, and some have already declared that cloned meat can't be distinguished from the meat of normal animals. But in the same breath, scientists admit there are genetic abnormalities in cloned meat. Clearly, there's not enough data to make any real determination about the long-term human health effects of eating cloned meat, milk, and eggs.

With mad cow, foot and mouth, avian flu, and other diseases now posing a greater threat than ever in our globalized agricultural markets, the production of genetically identical animals could pose serious threats to food security. Genetic variation is already low from conventional breeding, and would be almost eliminated by cloning.  

As for the animals in our factory farms, cloning is the final assault on their well-being and dignity. When the FDA held a public meeting on animal cloning in November 2003, researchers reported a graphic list of problems for clones and their surrogate mothers in cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats—a string of developmental abnormalities and a host of deaths before, during, and after birth. The cloned animals exhibited grievous welfare problems, such as cows with grossly enlarged udders, major leg problems, and other forms of lameness. And these are the very animals trumpeted as success stories. 

At the same meeting, researchers reported that among the 134 embryos that survived to term in the largest sample of clones to date, nearly a third of them died before or after birth or within the first year. The FDA put a nice spin on this when it said, "The proportion of live, normal births appears to be increasing."  In other words, the situation has improved from atrocious to very bad.  

It is time for Congress, the FDA and other regulatory bodies to get involved in the animal-cloning debate. Many of the ethical concerns raised by human cloning apply here as well, to this reckless disregard for animal life. These questions should not be left entirely to scientists and corporations, since they have an intellectual and commercial stake in the outcome. Our government alone can stand up for the public interest in preventing this massive cruelty.

Cloning is a startling procedure, to be sure, and many scientists would have us view it as an inevitable stage in our technological development. But humanity's progress is not always defined by scientific innovation alone. Cloning—both human and animal—is one of these cases in which progress is defined by the exercise of wisdom and self-restraint.

Wayne Pacelle is president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States.